South London’s Royal Park is home to one of the best collections of cherry trees in the capital. Just beyond the cricket pitch is a road lined with the trees that leads straight to a Georgian villa called Ranger’s House. The blooming branches create a bubblegum arch that makes every picture look like the backdrop of a Wes Anderson film.

London’s botanical HQ is packed with floral wonders come spring. Make time for its Cherry Walk, starting at the Rose Garden at the back of Palm House, which is full of Japanese cherries. Two parallel rows with 15 trees apiece form a blushing runway to Temperate House. Go in April and they’ll also be accompanied by a thousand tulips.

You’ll find candyfloss archways of perfect blossom all over The Stray: a 200-acre stretch of parkland in Yorkshire’s regal spa town. Planted in 1953 to celebrate the Queen’s coronation, the blossoms are usually joined by patches of jewel-bright crocuses and sunshine daffodils in spring.

The fleeting, ethereal beauty of cherry blossom deserves a grand setting, and they don’t come much more opulent than a fourteenth-century castle on the edge of the Lake District. While ‘the stumpery’ doesn’t sound particularly enthralling, that’s where you’ll find Sizergh’s colourful collection of cherry trees. Not only are they a sweet sight for the eyes, they’re also a treat for the castle’s populations of bees, songbirds, badgers and voles.

Set on its very own peninsula with panoramic views over the Fal estuary, the air of this Cornish garden is filled with sweet wafts as the cherry and apple trees dotted around the headland burst into bloom. Capture that perfect picture at the Water Tower: a turreted cylinder that looks straight out of a fairytale and is surrounded by delicate white blossoms come April.

In-the-know picnickers will be familiar with this little oasis smack bang in the middle of Cardiff’s Civic Centre. Filled with landscaped gardens and surrounded by majestic Portland stone buildings, including City Hall and the National Museum, this elegant park is a picturesque spot no matter what time of year. But it’s spring when it really comes into its own, when the tree-lined avenues blush pink.

Unlike the much more sculpted and hilly Princes Street Gardens at the very centre of Edinburgh, this flat expanse of grass to the south of the city is special for its sheer wide-openness. That also means plenty of space for lines of cherry trees that take over the park as soon as they get their annual dusting of pink. Seeing the delicate blossom in the shadow of Arthur’s Seat is a truly jaw-dropping sight.

Known locally as ‘The Glen’, this park near Fife is a green idyll with woodland walks, tropical glasshouses and a little museum full of natural history specimens. Its cherry tree-lined avenues are a haze of pink in spring, and if you’re after even more of the Asian vibes, there’s also a Japanese Garden with a Kyoto-style bridge and summerhouse. As you wander, look out for the park’s resident peacocks – there are nine.

Perched on a wooded hill overlooking the Bristol Channel, Dunster Castle (which has been around since Norman times) is an impressive sight. Equally spectacular are its gardens, which take visitors through four different microclimates reflecting different areas of the world. In the River Garden – representing the UK’s own climate – you’ll find flowering cherry trees with flamingo blossoms perched beguilingly above the wild wooded undergrowth.